Yes. Every newly elected or appointed director of a Florida homeowners' association must complete a state-approved educational course within 90 days of taking office (Fla. Stat. §720.3033). A director who does not is suspended from the board until the requirement is met. This is not a formality your board can quietly skip: the certificate has to exist, and it has to be on file.

This page explains what the requirement actually is, what happens when a director ignores it, and how you can find out where your own board stands.

The requirement in one paragraph

A director takes office. From that date they have 90 days to complete an educational curriculum approved by the state. When they finish, they receive a certificate, and that certificate goes to the association's secretary to be kept with the official records. The requirement applies to the seat, not the title, so it catches every director and not just the officers.

What the course has to cover

The curriculum is set by statute rather than left to the provider. It covers:

  • Financial literacy and transparency, including how to read the association's budget
  • Recordkeeping, meaning which official records the association keeps and how owners may inspect them
  • Levying fines, including the notice and hearing steps a board must follow first
  • Notice and meeting requirements

In practice the approved courses run about four hours. If those four topics look familiar, it is because they are the four things Florida boards most often get wrong, and the four things owners most often complain about.

What happens when a director does not certify

This is the part worth understanding clearly, because it has teeth.

A director who has not certified within their 90 days, and a sitting director whose certificate has expired, is suspended from the board until a new certificate is filed with the secretary. There is no grace period. Filing the certificate cures the suspension, and the board may temporarily fill the seat in the meantime.

The Division's rule, in force since September 7, 2026, spells this out: a director who misses the applicable filing deadline is suspended from the board until compliant, and filing the certificate with the secretary is what ends the suspension. For a renewal, the filing deadline is September 29 of the year the certificate runs out (Rule 61B-19.004, Florida Administrative Code).

What that does not mean is that the board's decisions come undone. The statute says so in terms: "the failure to have the written certification or educational certificate on file does not affect the validity of any board action" (Fla. Stat. §720.3033(1)(c)). The consequence runs to the seat, not to the board's acts, so a vote taken while a director was out of compliance still stands. If you want the seat addressed, raise it in writing and ask for the answer in the minutes.

How long a certificate lasts

An HOA director's certificate is valid for four education years, as long as the director serves without a break. Florida counts an education year from July 1 to June 30 (Rule 61B-19.004, Florida Administrative Code, effective September 7, 2026), and the year the course is completed counts as the first. So a director who certified in September 2026 is covered through June 30, 2030, whether they win one election or three in between. Being re-elected does not reset the clock; a gap in service does, and a returning director takes the course again. To renew, the director completes the course again and files the new certificate with the secretary by September 29 of the year it runs out.

Counting the completion year as the first of the four is our reading of the rule; the Division has not published an example. It keeps every certificate inside the statute's "up to 4 years."

The annual education on top of it

Certification is the entry ticket. Sitting directors also complete continuing education every year:

  • 4 hours a year for associations with fewer than 2,500 parcels
  • 8 hours a year for associations with 2,500 parcels or more

The hours are due by June 30 of each education year, which runs July 1 to June 30, so every director on the board is on the same calendar (Rule 61B-19.004). The hours may be spread across courses, but the same course may not be counted twice in one education year. An HOA director may also count the certification course itself toward continuing education for the education year it is completed in, once every four years.

Directors who were already serving

The certification requirement took effect on July 1, 2024 as part of HB 1203. A director already serving before that date was not on the 90-day clock, and the industry treated June 30, 2025 as the deadline for them to catch up.

Read that transition date as an interpretation rather than a settled rule. The June 30, 2025 deadline is the one the industry used; it is not stated in the statute itself. What is not in doubt is the position today: a long-serving director is judged on whether they currently hold a valid certificate, not on when they were first elected.

How to find out where your board stands

The certificate is filed with the secretary, which makes it part of the association's official records, which means you can ask for it.

  1. Send a written records request for the education certificates of each sitting director. You have a specific right here, not just the general one: the association must retain each director's certificate for inspection by the members for five years after that director's election (Fla. Stat. §720.3033(1)(c)). The general records rule also applies, and the association generally has 10 business days to respond (Fla. Stat. §720.303(5)). See how to request HOA records in Florida.
  2. Ask at a meeting and ask for the answer to be recorded in the minutes.
  3. If the records are not produced, the failure itself is a problem with its own remedy. See what to do when your HOA will not give you records.

You are not being difficult by asking. The certificate exists precisely so that it can be filed and produced.

If you are the director reading this

Plenty of people land on this page because they were just elected and are working out what they signed up for. The requirement is real, the 90 days runs from the day you took office, and the consequence for missing it is suspension rather than a reminder letter.

The course is offered by a number of state-approved providers, including free ones run by the state and by law firms. BoardComply's HOA course is one of them, and it is free to start if you want to see the material before paying for it.

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